Cats and Dogs

                   I was at the check-in desk, multitasking as clients arrived for Sunday dinner, when I noticed a distressed post from a long ago client.  I hit the “care” reaction and turned by attention back to the room. Then the first message arrived, “Sorry for the doom post.  I just feel like shit.  Someone triggered me bad,” he wrote.  “I’m struggling for $20 for my dogs since I don’t get paid til Wednesday and this man offered me $20 to sleep with him.  It just took me back to 20 years ago in my brain and made me not ok,” he said, referring to his homeless days.  “I can see how that could happen,” I wrote back.  “Try using your senses to remind your brain that you are not there anymore.  Find some things you can touch, smell, etc.”  It’s an abbreviated version of a common grounding exercise.  I know he knows it, so I didn’t spell it out. Then I sent him $20.  I really try to limit giving money – there are so many needs out there I could run out quickly.

People cast aspersions on low income people with pets, I hear it all the time on the rescue groups.  But people without resources value their pets as much as everyone else, sometimes more because they have so little else.  They do as much as they can for them. I have often heard of people skipping meals so their animal can eat.  I have known people who stayed on the street rather than enter a shelter where their animal wasn’t welcome.   

           Smokey’s original owner, a trans client of mine who loved all animals, once arranged an encounter with a man to get money for cat food.  The man tried to force her into more than they had agreed on, and when she fought him off he pulled a knife and cut her finger so badly it was barely attached.  When the police came to the ER, the first thing they did was run a warrant check on her because they couldn’t see a trans person as a victim.  When she died a few years later, from a combination of sepsis and America’s fucked up health system, I took Smokey.  His giant grey fuzzy self is my last connection to her.

                  One of Mamdani’s intiatives is to set aside $750,000 to create pet food pantries in every borough, which will be a huge help to low income pet owner.  Up until now, the only one has been at the Bronx ACC and it’s a long trek carrying heavy bags of chow if you live in another borough.  Next , we need affordable vet care.  The free spay/neuter spots, which are only available to certified cat rescuers, go so fast that my rescue friends log on as soon as the new ones open up at midnight and just grab whatever they can.  If they don’t happen to have a cat who needs it when the date comes around, they pass them off to other rescuers.  For regular people who just need to do a pet, the situation is even worse.  As a case manager, I can refer our clients to the Community Care program, but most people don’t have access to that.  

                  Then beyond just spay/neuter and vaccination, the costs of caring for a sick or injured pet have become astronomical.  Part of this is because of private equity taking over vet practices and prioritizing profit, just like they did with human healthcare.  My own vet is still a sole practitioner, but he has told me about how the costs of insurance, lab work that he sends out, medical waste disposal and the various other things that go into running a practice keep climbing.

                  There are few things as heartbreaking as not being able to avoid healthcare for the animal you love.  Years ago, I came home late one night after an activist meeting and found my brown tabby Prex unconscious but breathing.  Prex was born in my house after I rescued his mother, and he wasn’t that old.  I called my vet but he was at a conference in Westchester.  “Even if I leave now, I won’t get there in time,” he said.  I had to take him to one of the insanely expensive emergency vet hospitals.  They were able to save Prex, but they demanded payment for each day by the end of the day, and the only way I could do it was by borrowing a friend’s credit card, and I will always be grateful for that trust and generosity.  Prex lived to be an old guy, although his near death experience left him prone to seizures that had to be managed with meds.